creativity, I curse thee

Classes in the craft center are not something I've indulged in lately. The choice of the word "indulged" is a perfect example of the issue at hand. Let me explain, I am in a creative funk. A creative funk I am in. In a creative funk am I. See?

I have a theory as to the whys and hows. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. And utter bullshit, I'm sure. But it's mine. Perhaps I should start with my fear rather than my theory. My fear is that, quite simply, the normal 9 to 5 working-world I live in will make me dumb. The struggle to sound reasonably intelligent on a consistent basis is pretty small. This is not because the people I work with are idiots, quite the contrary generally speaking, but rather the work environment prizes brevity and (what can only be described as) arena rock fist-pumping. Keeping with the arena rock metaphor, the salesmen all purchased front row tickets, upper management sit a tasteful distance from the stage to keep an eye on which way the wind is blowing, and all entry-level people fill in the space behind. I'm lucky, my work group firmly plants itself in the back row, unwilling to drink the kool-aid.* So at least I have that going for me. What's the point, you ask, dear reader? The point is, this isn't my last gig where I struggled to keep up intellectually. The struggle is good. It makes us better. I'm not trying to posit that I'm smarter than everyone I work with, merely that everyone I used to work with on a daily basis were WAY smarter than me. Way. Circling back around to the fear bit, I fear I am now dumber than I was because I no longer have the daily struggle.

My theory is that intense, sustained intellectual concentration and resultant (ahem, required) production of papers to explain your Buddha-like sitting position act as balm to one's creative thoughts. At least it did for me. You tell a story, give it suspense, evidence (!!), tease out the meaning, and hopefully don't put the reader to sleep. The part I loved about writing academic papers was making them not sound terribly academic.** Perhaps it's just the intellectual exhaustion I miss. What I'm getting at is that I had a creative outlet within my work. No such outlet exists for me now so I must go in search of it elsewhere.

For a while, this blog served as a creative outlet. I've built a kick-ass butcher block table which is functional and quite beautiful. I learned bike maintenance and various other things. But alas, I find myself in another creative funk. Creativity, I curse thee.*** Have no fear, I know what I need to do. Creativity is not something to "indulge" or pander to. It is something to chase after. This is just a rather long explanation of why my blog sucks. And my thoughts over the past couple months.

Sincerely,
AKN


* I am in a creative funk, I'm more than allowed to mix my metaphors.
** Perhaps this is a good indicator of why I ventured out into the working world rather than continuing in higher education.
*** Not really. You know what I mean anyway.